The story of Abraham smashing his father's idols might be the most important Jewish story ever told and the key to how Jews define themselves. In a work at once deeply erudite and wonderfully accessible, Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin conducts readers through the life and legacy of this powerful story and explains how it has shaped Jewish consciousness.
Offering a radical view of Jewish existence, The Gods Are Broken! views the story of the young Abraham as the "primal trauma" of Jewish history, one critical to the development of a certain Jewish comfort with rebelliousness and one that, happening in every generation, has helped Jews develop a unique identity. Salkin shows how the story continues to reverberate through the ages, even in its connection to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.
Salkin's work—combining biblical texts, archaeology, rabbinic insights, Hasidic texts (some never before translated), philosophy, history, poetry, contemporary Jewish thought, sociology, and popular culture—is nothing less than a journey through two thousand years of Jewish life and intellectual endeavor.
The story of Abraham smashing his father's idols might be the most important Jewish story ever told and the key to how Jews define themselves. In a work at once deeply erudite and wonderfully accessible, Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin conducts readers through the life and legacy of this powerful story and explains how it has shaped Jewish consciousness.
Offering a radical view of Jewish existence, The Gods Are Broken! views the story of the young Abraham as the "primal trauma" of Jewish history, one critical to the development of a certain Jewish comfort with rebelliousness and one that, happening in every generation, has helped Jews develop a unique identity. Salkin shows how the story continues to reverberate through the ages, even in its connection to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.
Salkin's work—combining biblical texts, archaeology, rabbinic insights, Hasidic texts (some never before translated), philosophy, history, poetry, contemporary Jewish thought, sociology, and popular culture—is nothing less than a journey through two thousand years of Jewish life and intellectual endeavor.
Reviews-
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March 11, 2013
Although it involves biblical characters, the widely known story of Abraham’s smashing the idols in the shop of his father, Terah, is not in the Bible. Nevertheless, according to author Salkin (The Modern Men’s Torah Commentary), it is the forerunner of monotheism, the beginning of Jewish history, and may “be the most important Jewish story ever told.” His book tries to demonstrate the truth of these contentions by examining commentaries on the story by theologians, poets, writers, philosophers, a composer, and an artist. He examines the implications of the story for Christians and Muslims and its relationship to anti-Semitism. Salkin, a Reform rabbi, gave up his congregational pulpit to become director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New Jersey office, claiming that this move gives him a new opportunity to fight against bigotry in general and anti-Semitism in particular. He makes impressive claims for the overriding significance of this story, but surely many biblical stories can arguably be considered to be “the most important Jewish story.” -
February 15, 2013
A rabbi delivers a thoughtful homily on the iconoclasm of Scripture's proto-Hebrew. The old story is comfortably familiar: Young Abraham destroyed the idols that were his father's stock in trade and became the world's first monotheist. That early episode served as foreshadowing of the subsequent career of the biblical patriarch, yet the Abrahamic back story, a primal tale as integral to Christianity and Islam as it is to Judaism, is not found in the Hebrew Bible. Rather, the tale originated with a rabbinic expository narrative dating from the first century of the Common Era. The shattering of those graven images is a foundational legend essential to the Abrahamic faiths, but particularly for Jews, whose religious job description, as noted by Salkin (Text Messages: A Torah Commentary for Teens, 2012, etc.), entails the smashing of icons. The mission of the Jews, as outsiders, is to act as exemplars. The author sees that, today, the false gods of consumerism and materialism need to be broken, and the vocation of Abraham's co-religionists, "the Other," is still the setting of standards. That may explain, in part at least, anti-Semitism. In passionate prose (that often switches tense, even in mid-sentence), Salkin follows the theme of fire, as a form of punishment, and the theme of shattering, from Creation to the destruction by Moses of the first edition of the Ten Commandments to Kristallnacht and the glass-shattering by the Nazis. Remarkably, and despite all the evidence, the author declares that the Holocaust was not a war against the Jews or Judaism. It was a war, he asserts, against God. His sermon purports to call all the monotheistic faiths to renewed iconoclastic spirit, though it appears most urgently and clearly directed to members of his own faith. An earnest exegesis of a powerful legend of the first Jew, designed for the faithful--not for atheist or pagan readers.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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April 1, 2013
The story's not in the Bible, but Hebrew-school veterans, Salkin says, virtually all know it. When he was about bar mitzvah age, Abram destroyed his idol-making father's wares because, among other things, grown men shouldn't worship clay figurines. In so doing, he became the first Jew and established the tradition that Jews are idol-smashers. Mining the vast troves of Jewish legendry and midrashim, Salkin expands and deepens knowledge and understanding of the biblical Abram, both before and after God changed his name and promised that his descendants would be the chosen people. He also discusses Moses, when he shattered the first tablets he received from God in a most consequential and very surprising later act of idol smashing. Iconoclasm is essential to being Jewish, Salkin argues, and continuesor should continuetoday against the consumerism and materialism worshipped at the altar of free-market economics. Of course, there are consequences for idol smashing, which is why the Jews have so long been exiles and outsiders, dissidents and protesters. Lively, engaging biblical exegesis for Christians, perhaps, even more than Jews.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)
